Tools
See it for yourself
Small, interactive tools built on open data from the UN, the World Bank and Our World in Data. Play with them, check the sources, and make up your own mind. New ones arrive every few weeks.
The Loading Bar
Drag a slider from 1900 to 2076 and watch the ten things that matter most fill up, with published projections for the next fifty years.
Watch the world loadGuess first
Ten questions about the world in the spirit of Hans Rosling. Most people guess too gloomy. Do you?
Take the quizThe world since you were born
Type a year of birth and see how far the world has loaded in that lifetime, measure by measure.
Try your yearWatch the world light up
Press play and watch 125 years roll across the planet: life expectancy, children surviving, poverty, incomes, school, disease and the vote.
Spin the globeComing soon
A wall of Rosling’s 32 improvements rebuilt with today’s data. And the three ratchets that lock progress in: laws, information and trade.
Every figure comes from a named, open source and is listed in the tool itself. Projections only appear where a named body has published one. Read how we check things in our editorial standards, and if you spot a mistake, tell us.